Mark Franek is the academic dean at The Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia. Prior to joining The Rock School, he taught composition courses at Cabrini College and Philadelphia University, and before that, from 1999 to 2007, he served as the dean of students and an English teacher at the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia. Mark is also a freelance writer.
Many of his opinion-editorials and articles are inspired by students or some aspect of school life. He writes regularly about educational issues, such as equality, diversity, opportunity, technology, and freedom of speech—themes and ideas that often take their first tentative breaths in America’s classrooms.
Mark’s articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and journals, including the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Christian Science Monitor, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Educational Leadership, Friends Journal, Philadelphia Lawyer Magazine, English Journal, among others (see list).
Mark has a BA in English (1991) and an MAT (1992) from Duke University, and a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania (2007). (See dissertation abstract, which describes a study on the “lived experiences” of schoolchildren in an urban Quaker school’s meeting for worship.)
Now, in my own voice: Why oped writing?
About eight years ago, I wrote my first oped about the initial installment of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I wrote it at the invitation of a friend who showed me how to send unsolicited pieces to newspaper editors over the Internet. It’s pretty easy, really.
Craft an opinion between 600-900 words (the shorter the better), fashion a good “hook” in the first sentence or two, say something novel and a bit aggressive, trust fervently that you’ve actually written something worth reading over a cup of coffee or a bagel, be timely, and click the “send” button. The hard part is getting a positive response from editors (“ok, we’ll use this”).
One of my high school English teachers was fond of doling out advice to would-be writers. Find your voice, he’d say. At an assembly my senior year a poet added, Knock enough nouns against enough verbs and eventually something good will happen. In college I graduated to metaphor, care of a favorite professor. His rallying cry before each writing assignment: Just throw strikes!
I walked a lot of batters in college.
Learning how to write well takes years of practice. Any writer or teacher who says something different is not telling the truth.
Writing has not come easily to me, but the desire to write has been incessant. When I was about 10 years old I remember asking a friend of my father’s—a regular contributor to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine—the secret to becoming a writer. He merely smiled and stroked the tip of his beard.
Over the years I’ve learned more about the craft of writing from newspaper and magazine editors than from all my English teachers put together. I try to keep this in mind before I step into any classroom. Teaching is an optimistic, creative process, and good writing can be wheedled and cajoled. But the real work gets done far from the madding crowd of school.
Mark Franek
Philadelphia
markfranek (at) gmail (dot) com
